44 bodyguards continue to watch over ex-Gov. Borge

Former Quintana Roo Governor Roberto Borge at a press conference during his mandate (Photo: Animal Político)

Former Quintana Roo governor Roberto Borge Angulo is under investigation for embezzling 25 billion pesos (almost US $1.8 billion), but taxpayers continue to pay for his security.

The former governor, who completed his term of office last September, has a 44-strong security detail equipped with 12 official vehicles, all paid for by the state, according to mexiconewsdaily.com.

Some of those bodyguards even travelled with Borge to a National Basketball Association game last December in Miami.

Former Quintana Roo Governor Roberto Borge at a press conference during his mandate (Photo: Animal Político)

Borge’s predecessor and fellow member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Félix González Canto, is also watched over by the state, but his security staff was reduced last week from 14 to just two.

An additional 204 bodyguards had been assigned as the security detail for several former officials of the Borge administration, but all were reassigned recently by the state Interior Secretariat as they represented expenses of over 1 million pesos a month.

The Secretariat will now analyze Borge’s situation.

A formal complaint filed before the state Attorney General’s office last year accused the former governor of selling off state assets to his relatives and friends, allegedly at one per cent of the land’s value.

The current state administration also detected that 54 agents from the prosecutor’s investigative police had been assigned as bodyguards to “former governors and attorneys, and the managerial staff of several media companies.”

This situation, observed state Attorney General Miguel Ángel Pech Cen, is “detrimental to that institution” because human and tactical resources — meaning armament — were being diverted.

Last November, a former agent of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security employed by Spanish business people declared that he had bribed Borge in exchange for illegally registering 16 “rustic” real estate properties.

Juan Felipe Martínez added that despite giving Borge $800,000 USD, the governor never fulfilled the agreement and the official real estate records remained unaltered.